Kerre Woodham: Racer deaths bad luck? Yeah, right

Jesse Langeveld's family pleaded for the New Zealand public not to see him as a boy racer. Photo / Supplied

I know we all grieve differently, but the funerals of two of the young men killed last Friday took my breath away this week.

You'll remember the crash in Invercargill; 19-year-old Jesse Langeveld drove his modified Honda Civic into a wall, killing himself, 16-year-old Tylar Parry and another teen, Ethan Peek. A fourth boy, Shawn Milne, is in a serious condition in Southland Hospital.

Another week, another tragedy for more families of Kiwi boys. And it's no wonder the kids keep killing themselves when you have the level of denial exhibited at the funerals of Jesse and Tylar.

I have absolutely no doubt that those boys were loved beyond reason by their families. But the parents of these latest statistics did other families no service by trying to pretend that the crash that killed their kids was just some freakish stroke of bad luck.

Jesse's family pleaded for the New Zealand public not to see their kid as a boy racer. Um, kind of hard not to. He was driving a modified Honda Civic, by the family's own admission he lived for his cars and the crash happened in the early hours of Friday morning when Jesse clipped an island on the road, smashed over a parking meter and crashed, at speed, into the concrete wall of a retail building resulting in three deaths and a serious injury. If that's not a boy racer, what is?

And yet, even at the funeral, a family friend, decked out in a Tui beer-branded deerstalking cap, dismissed the role Jesse had to play in his own death.

"We all did it," he said. "It's just that cars today are more powerful and not as tough." Right. So it's not Jesse's fault at all that he was driving too fast and couldn't handle it. It's that they don't make'em like they used to. Dear me.

It was even worse later in the day when young Tylar was farewelled. He was a brilliant kid, apparently. Full of ability and potential.

And how did the family choose to commemorate their much loved boy? By putting a Tui beer-branded sombrero on his coffin - a cheap hat handed out by a beer rep. He wasn't even old enough to drink. Great advertising for Tui. Yeah. Right.

I know we've all made mistakes. It could have been any one of us back in the day, driving too fast, taking risks, drinking and making wrong choices. And most of us survived to tell the tale and tut tut at the younger generation doing it all over again.

But if you've stuffed up, man up. Acknowledge that your kid made the wrong call and not only did he suffer for it, his mates suffered for it too.

Remind the kids, while their mate is lying smashed beyond recognition in a coffin, that they're just as breakable as he is. That racing each other around town isn't always going to end with laughter, backslapping and a few beers back at the flat.

I know those parents are hurting, but denying the role their own kids' decisions played in their deaths is plain wrong. Just because others get away with it doesn't make their boys innocent. It makes the rest of them lucky ... And one day, just like Jesse and Tylar and Ethan, their luck might run out.

Wouldn't you sleep better if you'd used the senseless death of your own much loved kid to dissuade a young man from getting into a modified car late at night?

I know I would, but then, like I said - we all grieve differently.

* www.kerrewoodham.com